Holy crap, Black and White!

Yeah, so I'm sure I'm not the only one who's being swept away by the hype that is Pokemon Black and White, which hit Japan just a short time ago. I figure this would be the best time to pick the blog back up, since now I have a LOT to say about the games. =3

I think it would be a good habit on my part if I tried to post about 1 pokemon, 1 move, and 1 item each day: this way I can more thoroughly understand and put to memory what's new and what everything else. Plus I need to do something with this.

How will I pick topics: look at the first threads on smogon for moves, pokemon, and item. Eventually I'll get through them all. =P

First let me discuss one of the prettiest of new grass pokemon: Doreida. It's so pretty, look it up just to see it wave its pretty grass skirt. On a more serious note, it looks UU material with its base stats. 70 HP and 75 defenses is definitely not the best for a mono-grass type, especially when compared to things like Shaymin: what it makes up with is 90 base speed and 110 base spa. Still, it falls down as being another of those poor grass types that are sun users with abilities Chlorophyll and Leaf Guard: the latter being poor and the former having better pokemon to abuse it with(Exeggutor comes to mind). The only thing that seperates it from everything else is one of the most hyped moves in Butterfly Dance(think CM with +1 Speed as well). Personally I think Venomoth can more abuse Sleep Powder + BDance thanks to access to Baton Pass, as well as Bug STAB with Tinted Lens. Grass by itself is also horrid coverage, and her SpA doesn't have enough to break through that of the most prevalent and centralizing Special Walls: Blissey. It does have a cool gimmick of Petal Dance + Own Tempo(Petal Dance now being a Special-type outrage clone). If you do consider using this pokemon regardless, consider the following set to completely frustrate opposing teams:

Doreida @ Leftovers
Own Tempo: Timid/ Modest
4 Defense, 252 Speed, 252 Sp. Attack
0/ 2 HP IV
Petal Dance
Butterfly Dance
Substitute
Leech Seed

And here the fun begins: threaten something like Damp Swampert now and get a sub/ Butterfly Dance. Even its pathetic defenses could potentially be enough to get off a Leech Seed for you to start SubStalling. Once you have a Sub, Butterfly Dance up and attempt to wreck things with your unfortunately pitiful STAB. You can try to replace something with HP Fire to hit other grass types, but then you won't be nearly as cool of a set. Try to keep a sub up before Petal Dancing. It should be incredibly obnoxious and fun for you!

Next we are going to look at the move of the day: Shell Break. It basically increases everything offensive and decreases everything defensive: Attack, Sp Attack, and Speed go up, but both defenses drop. It's pretty cool: then you consider the pokemon that get it and it's AMAZING!!!

One of my favorite pokemon ever, Cloyster, go the move. The -1 in Physical Defense wouldn't be enough to leave it terribly vulnerable to priority(watch out for tech breloom Mach Punch), and you get so many cool moves such as his new Physical water STAB(a powered up version of Rock Smash), Icicle Spear with Skill Link(each hit has 25 BP per hit now!), Rock Blast(up to 90% accuracy), Explosion, Surf, Ice Beam.... and with a surprising base 70 speed it isn't that terribly slow after a boost, hitting 393 after a single boost(just shy one point of base 130s, I'm afraid). You also can go slow + mean with Ice Shard, helping against Breloom among others!

For item we have Bulb. The general idea is that a pokemon gets hit with a water attack and gets a boost in SpA: but does it get an immunity? Halve damage? One time use? Stays forever? Until these specifics are tested, I can't really say much except that maybe Doubles RD abuse will probably love this.

Finally, I'll get to abilities. Everyone should know this: Ninetales gets Drought and Politoed gets Drizzle. Yesyesyes, Nintendo finally gave us our eternal weather users of OU: but at what cost? Considering for the past two generations, lvl 5 Groudon was too centralizing and powerful to be allowed in OU, what makes these any different? Especially Drizzle, with many pokemon getting speed boosts and power boosts that bring those pokemon to insane proportions: I mean, sure B+W is already insane, but really? I'm not screaming "broken", but I think it'll be centralizing... for a period. We'll see how it turns out in the end, though. Too bad Abomasnow is the only weather user for Hail: now everything has two fully evolved weather users except for Hail.

Articanus signing out. Tune in tomorrow for new stuff from my point of view, and feel free to subscribe!